Hans Jacobs 

16:20 - 16:45 "Personalized mass spectrometry as a tool for minimal residual disease detection in the blood of myeloma patients." 

Dr. Jacobs works as Laboratory Specialist Medical Immunology at the Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His team has a strong track record on flow-cytometric immune profiling, single-cell sequencing, metabolic profiling, targeted mass spectrometry, combined with cellular immunoassays for functional readout. The overarching aim of his research line ‘Personalized onco-immunology diagnostics’  is to understand the complex interplay between cancer and the immune system and to develop novel cancer-diagnostics that have a significant impact for patients.

Dr. Jacobs is head of the national reference centre for M-protein diagnostics and co-author of the Dutch guidelines for myeloma diagnostics. Successful (inter)national collaboration with clinicians, industrial partners and patient-organizations resulted in the launch of three CE- and FDA-marked assays that were developed within his group. Recently his team has developed a personalized mass spectrometry-based MRD blood-test (MS-MRD) as patient-friendly alternative to invasive bone marrow-based myeloma monitoring for which they received prestigious Science & Innovation awards.